


Stories

by alafaye



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 11:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alafaye/pseuds/alafaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony wants a story; turns out, stories are more complicated than either of them realize.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2013 winter adventchallenge; master list and prompts can be found [here](http://alafaye.livejournal.com/350228.html). This is day 4, stories.

They should have been sleeping. Both of them had been injured pretty hard just a few days ago and while Steve wasn't taking any pills, Tony was. Or rather, he should've been. Even Steve wasn't sure how many of his persciptions Tony was taking and Steve spent the most time with Tony. If Tony was taking what he had been prescribed, he should still be sleeping at least ten hours a night with naps here and there. 

Yet even without the pills, they should be resting to recover from their injuries. And they...weren't.

Sometimes, though, you just couldn't sleep.

Steve, lying on his back and watching the projected view of the snow ( _Christmas snow_ his mind told him since it was falling on Christmas Eve) on the far wall, shifted just that little bit so he could bend his head to rest on Tony's. Tony grumbled, the shift having jostled his arm where he was noting calculations on a tablet. Steve glanced down at the notes and marveled at Tony's patience for teaching because at least some of it, Steve understood. He would never be an engineer or scientist, but at least he could get by enough that he would know if something was dangerous when he found it on a mission.

As Tony adjusted to having Steve closer, the dog tags on Tony's chest caught the light from the tablet. Steve laid his hand on Tony's chest, just under the tags. He shouldn't have given them to Tony--or, rather, let Tony have them as Tony was the one who had taken them from Steve and worn them one night--but he couldn't help it. The sight of Tony wearing them...well, it wasn't polite or proper, but a primitive part of Steve liked having Tony wear them. He liked that Tony walked around wearing something that declared he belonged to Steve Rogers.

"Cave man," Tony teased, lips twitching with a smile.

Steve shrugged, embarrassed. Tony saved his work and set it aside. He looked up at Steve through his eyelashes. "Possessive."

Steve blushed and covered the tags with his hand. The chain was just the right length that they covered the scars from the arc reactor; it was, Steve had found out just last week, one of the reasons Tony liked the tags. The metal was just a little cool to the touch and rough at the edges where it caught the suit sometimes. Tony had a mold made so he could reprint the tags if the writing ever faded or if the tags got too damaged. (And if some of the information on the mold was different, well, that was neither here nor there.)

Tony's hand covered Steve's. Not smooth like nearly all of the wealthy hands Steve had shook--both in the forties and in this new century--but rather calloused, rough, worn in. Steve tried to replicate their feel, the way they looked, on paper and canvas and whatever else he could get his hands on, but it was never quite right. Like Steve, Tony was one of a kind and he couldn't be made again, not even on paper.

"Tell me a story," Tony asked quietly.

Steve tensed up and Tony squeezed his hand. The tags clinked together, softly. "A story?" Steve asked carefully.

Tony tilted his head up to kiss Steve's chin. "From the war. Christmas--I know that getting supplies was difficult, but was there something?"

Steve sucked in a breath. He'd only been at the front for one Christmas. He and his men had been offered some leave time, but they hadn't taken it. He couldn't remember why now, but they had stuck it out together. And because they hadn't taken the leave, they had been sent to Austria for...what had it been?

"Too much?" Tony asked, his voice bringing Steve back with a hard landing. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. Want to know what I was working on?"

Steve turned his head and kissed the top of Tony's head. Tony froze in mid-sentence and the silence that followed was taut with an uneasy truce. Steve swallowed hard and thought back. "We were in Austria, my team. We were getting some intel on some weapons factory. The higher ups didn't know if it was a Hydra facility or if it was just manufacturing weapons for Hitler's men."

The factory had been hidden deep in the mountains; the statistics were high that it was Hydra, but in those days, no one was ever sure of anything. The Howling Commandos had more experience with Hydra so if there was a chance, they were better suited to going in. If it was a simple factory, they were only to gather intel. If it was Hydra, they had orders to destroy the factory.

"I thought you had an edict memory," Tony asked. "Wouldn't you have known if it was a Hydra facility? From having seen it on a map somewhere?"

"Information was lost and rewritten so many times," Steve answered. "Some of the stolen information and maps our spies got were deliberately wrong, to confuse us."

"No one ever talks about that part," Tony grumbled. History written by the victors; Steve's heard Tony complain about the lack of proper information before, especially when it comes up during one of Steve's (accidentally) dropped hints about the war. Steve doesn't know if it's because Tony wants to know more about his father and his work or if it's because Tony likes having all the data.

"We wouldn't look like heroes if people knew that we couldn't tell the difference between accurate information and misleading," Steve says quietly.

Tony sniffs and Steve drops the subject. It's a difficult one, for them. Tony, growing up as he had and working and living in a glass bowl, puts a lot of attention into the details people will see. Steve believes in more honesty, even when living in a glass bowl. It doesn't matter how anybody may judge them; they have their own lives to live and damn anyone who thinks that their opinions should affect the lives of those they look in on. (Naturally, Tony will then argue about loosing money and status and missions; Steve thinks they could get by in mortgaged house with no one calling on Captain America and Iron Man. And there were plenty of places where they could both feel and be useful. Naturally, Tony disagrees.)

"So," Tony says into the silence. "Factory?"

"It was in the mountains and it had just snowed," Steve continues. "Four feet of it." He smiles. "They complained, of course. But no one really likes to do intel gathering while freezing because you have to walk through the snow drifts."

The closest the plan could get them was several miles from the factory. They'd have to stop for the night and the higher ups had given them a care package from the states to cheer up their Christmas. It hadn't been much--a few comics, some chocolate, cookies, a pair of socks--but it had been enough. More than enough. Steve hadn't had chocolate in months, none of them had. They split the bar into even pieces and savoured it. A Christmas feast of chocolate and cookies. 

Tony shook his head. "I can't imagine going a day without whatever I want."

Steve was silent; in their early days, it had been a sore point between them. Tony really hadn't ever had to go without for long and Steve, well, Steve had grown up in the Depression. It hadn't been about not getting what you want; it had been about making do with whatever you found, even if it might be slightly molded. You cut the mold out and heated it up and that was dinner. To Steve, most people in this modern era were spoiled for choice and needs and wants. 

Now, Steve just wished that he had the ability to have their faith that when they want to the store, to a soup kitchen, to a food bank--there was always food. The debates in Washington over cutting SNAP benefits--to Steve, it came from people who had always had enough and were unwilling to find a way to ensure that those who didn't have enough had at least dinner every night. For Steve, he wanted to make sure that the people he loved would never know what it meant to go without whatever they wanted. To Steve, no one should ever know hunger or want.

No matter how spoilt they were.

"I know, Tony," Steve whispered against his lover's hair. 

Tony lifted Steve's hand to his mouth and kissed the palm. "I don't want you to ever go without, you know."

"You wanted a story from Christmas at the front," Steve teased.

Tony sighed and stared off at the window, the snow falling outside. "You're going to be embarrassed by the presents."

Steve half smiled. "I'm sure we all will be. You're probably having the bots bringing the presents into the living room at three in the morning, a huge mountain of them and all wrapped by professionals with a ridiculous amount of bows."

"Of course," Tony joked. "But that's not...Steve, I...when I realized that I had people to buy presents for--I couldn't...I had to buy you gifts that..."

"You bought me things that I probably missed getting, being a kid who grew up poor?" Steve guessed. Tony hunched down, as low as he could given he had only been half sitting up, but Steve pulled him up, properly sitting up. With a smile, Steve kissed him, soft and slow. "I figured you would. That's the kind of person you are."

It would've pissed him off; it should've, but Steve found that it was only Tony trying his hardest to be loving and attentive and since Steve wasn't fond of new technology (other than what the team could use in battle), Tony would've been left with only a handful of items he _could_ buy. And when Steve had been growing up, it hadn't been a mountain of presents for him; it had been just a toy car or maybe a new sketchbook. It had always meant the world to him because it was always something he liked. And since new things were rare, whatever presents he got was absolutely fine.

Most of it would be donated, they both knew. There would be toys and new art supplies and maybe some new tech, knowing Tony, but later in the day, they would all go to visit charities and homes and give kids the presents; Iron Man and Captain America would be out on the streets, handing out toys. 

And they don't have to say it; they just know that.

"Love you," Tony mumbles. "Even if you're impossible to shop for and you're going to rope me into giving them all away."

Steve chuckles. "What would I do with a dozen or three toys, Tony?"

As Tony launches into ideas he's been thinking about ever since he saw all the wires and parts that the toys come with, Steve listens fondly to Tony's story. He's warm and in a soft bed with his lover; no worries over trench foot or enough food or missing all the things that come Christmas. Steve misses the closeness from the war, of course he does, but this is just as good, too.


End file.
